Twitter Suspends Alt-Right Accounts

Twitter Is Suspending Multiple Alt-Right Accounts

Just yesterday, Twitter introduced a few new features to help combat the growing issue of abuse on the social-media platform. The expanded tools allow Twitter users to take some personal actions against harassment. Today, Twitter itself got to work by cutting abusers from the network. Mashable reports that Twitter has banned several accounts associated with the alt-right, a right-wing group that rejects mainstream conservatism. One alt-right member included in the recent Twitter purge is Richard Spencer, the head of the National Policy Institute (NPI). On NPI's website, the organization describes itself as being "dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States." NPI and other alt-right organizations have been using Twitter to spread their white-supremacist rhetoric and Twitter will no longer tolerate it. The social-media platform said in a statement, "The Twitter Rules prohibit targeted abuse and harassment, and we will suspend accounts that violate this policy."

After having his account suspended, Spencer told the conservative news site The Daily Caller, "This is corporate Stalinism. Twitter is trying to airbrush the Alt Right out of existence. They’re clearly afraid. They will fail!”

The NPI and Spencer's publication, The Radix Journal, was also recently removed from Twitter, as well as other known alt-righter individuals including Paul Town, Pax Dickinson, Ricky Vaughn, and John Rivers.